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The Albacore is a very interesting aircraft type. Because it was designed to replace the Swordfish but didn't, a lot of people seem to dismiss it. But they fail to realise it didn't replace the Swordfish not because of any fault of its own, only because the Swordfish continued to be such an effective type itself.
I have talked with a couple of kiwis who flew the Albacore in action. One of them flew them in the defence of Singapore, Malaya and later Java, and he flew his one on the infamous Endau Raid where a ragtag group of everything the RAF could gather together (Vildebeests, Albacores, Hudsons, Buffalos) performed daylight attacks on a Japanese invasion fleet that was headed for Endau, Malaya. It was largely a suicide mission and they failed to stop the Japanese despite huge courage. The same week on the other side of the world the famous operation where Swordfish unsuccessfully attacked the German fleet saw a Victoria Cross and loads of medals dished out, but the guys who had it just as tough at Endau got nothing. The same chap later singlehandedly attacked a Japanese destroyer off Java in his Albacore, dropping a bomb and hitting it perfectly amidships only for it to do no damage whatsoever.
Another chap I have met flew the Albacore from a carrier in Arctic convoys, flying in freezing conditions.
And a third chap I met flew them in the North African desert with No. 823 Naval Air Squadron from Maaten Bagush in Egypt. History has sadly forgotten this but these are the actual chaps who invented the famous Pathfinder marking technique, and they were using it in action a year before the RAF began to adopt it in Europe. The Albacores of 823 Squadron would fly at night low over the desert, if they were lucky guided only by signals they received from the British Army troops on the ground, in the form of burning flares in the shape of arrows with perhaps a distance written with flares, 5 miles or whatever telling them of targets spotted by the army reconnaissance troops.
Sometimes the aircrews on patrol discovered enemy truck convoys, camps and fuel or ammo dumps by chance.
They would drop flares and their bombs on the target when found, and behind them came the RAF Wellingtons of the Desert Air Force that followed up with heavier bomb concentrations and bombed on the markers dropped by 823.
This technique worked so well it was actually one of the major contributing factors in pushing back the Germans from El Alamein. This has been forgotten, so the soldiers on the ground get full credit for the break out from Alamein. However without the Albacores spotting and marking and destroying the German camps, truck columns, and ammo and fuel dumps that breakout would have been a lot more difficult for the soldiers, perhaps impossible, and perhaps Egypt may have been overrun by Rommel.
Given the success achieved in the desert by the Navy Albacores in 1941-42, the RAF started to look at it, and eventually adopted it, and appointed navigation specialist Don Bennett to command the Pathfinder units. These days somehow he often gets credited with inventing the technique which is rubbish. He was running Ferry Command in Canada and Newfoundland when the Albacores were pathfinding in action. I have spoken with several pathfinder aircrew and other Bomber Command aircrew since I discovered all this and none of them had any idea about the Navy Albacores using the technique before the RAF. They are all fascinated by it.
The brave aircrews of No. 823 Squadron didn't just mark targets, they regularly bombed and strafed targets by day and night, they bombed enemy shipping in the Med, and on two occasions after the Fall of Tobruk the whole squadron swooped in low and slow and quietly mined Tobruk's Harbour without even being detected.
All the Albacore pilots I have had the opportunity to meet love the aeroplanes. they'd all flown Swordfish in training and all said they were much the same in handling, only slightly better performance, and best of all they had a canopy so were much more comfortable.
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Mark, see if you can find a photo of one lobstered up, but don't have any food or liquids in your mouth as you'll spray all over the monitor 
, but, have a look. this guys writing is really good.
